Published 5:30 am, Sunday, July 1, 2007

She and Ron said hello, and soon after, I love you. Goodbye came more than 25 years later.

A freak accident: Their water heater exploded. It was the fall of 2000, and they were living in Nashville. When the blast woke Dene, she thought a plane had crashed into the house. She ran through the flames, screaming for Ron to get out. He didn't make it.

The fire burned hot and fast, taking with it not just Dene's husband but her pictures and letters, her shoeboxes of mementos, the souvenirs of an eventful life. She'd treasured photos of her famous father, Judge Roy Hofheinz, in his glory days, when he was the county judge, or mayor, or building the Astrodome, or managing Lyndon Johnson's Senate campaign. She'd had photos of herself as the Astrodome's PR person, the pretty young thing who dated Frank Sinatra and showed Grace Kelly and Billy Graham around the Eighth Wonder of the World. She lost pictures of her sons, birthday cards from her parents, photos of herself and Ron with friends such as Paul Simon, Barry Manilow, Quincy Jones, Clint Black and Lisa Hartman.

Her life was in ashes.

Another legacy gone

In 2005, when AstroWorld closed, reporters tracked Dene down in L.A. On a radio talk program, she sang the theme park's kitschy old jingle, the one she'd written herself, the one she used to sing on TV: "
A-S-
T-R-O: oh, my!"

Dene couldn't believe that anyone would raze AstroWorld. And she worried that another part of her father's legacy — the Astrodome itself, the stadium that once transfixed the world — would disappear next. It was her life's biggest memento.

She decided to move back to Houston, to return to the place where she started, where people recognize her famous family name. But to her surprise, strangers now rarely ask whether she's Judge Roy Hofheinz's daughter, or even Mayor Fred Hofheinz's sister. They ask whether she's related to Hofheinz Pavilion, where the University of Houston's Cougars play basketball. One of her friends calls her Dene Pavilion.

When Hofheinz Pavilion opened in 1969, it was a great thing for the university but not what anyone would have suspected would be Judge Roy's most memorable contribution to the city. That, unquestionably, would have been the Astrodome.

When the Dome opened in 1965, it commanded magazine covers all over the world, and Johnny Carson cracked jokes about it on late-night TV. That Texans would dare to roof and air-condition a baseball field: It was either evidence of the state's can-do spirit or of its hubris. Either way, says Dene, all the world flocked to see "the spaceship that landed on the prairie."

Of course all the astronauts visited, and her dad's political connections, Gov. John Connally and LBJ. But there were movie stars and singers and royalty, too, celebrities from all over the world. Dene would call her girlfriends: Do you want to meet Gene Kelly? Tony Curtis? Houston Chronicle gossip columnist Maxine Mesinger made a habit of calling Dene for a rundown of the luminaries. "So," Maxine would rasp, "are you going to write my column for me today?"

When Elvis dropped in, Dene showed him Judge Roy's private Astrodome kingdom, with its 6-foot Thai temple dogs, its circus room and bowling alley, its gilded fixtures and velvet toilet seats. Elvis was enthralled. He and Judge Roy shared the same poor-boy craving for luxury.

Frank Sinatra was enthralled, too, but as much by Dene herself as by the Dome. They dated a few years, and Dene still keeps a photo in her living room: Frank with his left arm draped around her, shaking her father's hand with his right.

At moments like that, the Dome felt like the center of the universe.

Memories linger

Dene lives now in one of the new high-rises that crowd Post Oak Boulevard. She notes, with some satisfaction, that the place is located exactly where her friend Joanie lived in the 1950s. Dene remembers riding a horse from the Hofheinz family farm, down dirt roads, to go play.

Now, of course, the Galleria area is covered in office buildings, condos and luxury shopping. Sometimes, when Dene looks out her window, she toys with lyrics for a new song: The only thing left is the sky.

But she still has her memories. And once again, her walls are covered with pictures, with scenes from her life. Her son gave her photos of Judge Roy that he found on the Internet. At a garage sale, she scored an old campaign poster, a blow-up of her father's face. She has a poster of Muhammad Ali, who fought at the Dome, and a poster of Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus, which Judge Roy bought not long before his stroke. She has a print of an abstract Frank Sinatra painting. He made a painting especially for her once, but it burned.

In a corner of her living room, there's a plaque naming her father to the Texas Baseball Hall of Fame. Dene volunteers with the group. She figures its baseball museum will probably go to Minute Maid Park. She also favors the proposal to use the Dome as an air-conditioned container for a hotel and theme park. It's the kind of wild idea her father would have approved — an idea that would transform the Dome, but keep it in existence.

Here and there, Dene displays the few mementos that survived the fire. On one wall, there's a photo of Ron, charred only a little at the edge; she's not sure how it survived. The same goes for a singed photo of Sinatra.

She remembers finding her autographed picture of Elvis buried in the ashes. The frame had melted, but through the blackened glass she could still read the inscription: "What a way to make a living!" Dene briefly wondered whether the photo could be restored, but she decided to leave it exactly the way it was — darker than it used to be, and vastly changed, but full of memories.